Illustration Friday Topic: Craving

Hi Everyone! Here we have an oldie but a goodie! This is an illustration Carlos did in school, when we were first learning how to paint with Photoshop. I thought it would be suitable for "Craving" because the characters seem to be craving a bit of danger with their ice cream!

Scrap Stuff Photoshop Tutorials

Don't be fooled by the cutesy look of most of these tutorials. Even Carlos, who likes to create monsters and zombies half the time, will find very informative and solid Photoshop recipes and tutorials in this blog. Shawna is the creator of this blog and she makes it very easy to follow along with each tutorial. You can take each recipe and apply it to your own artwork. She creates these dimensional clean illustrations that are difficult to do in Photoshop if you do not have a recipe. Also some photo manipulation tools, like how to create a puzzle from an image, or how to make an image look like it's on old paper. There are a lot of different recipes to use. She also has a word document available for purchase with ALL of her tutorials, for $10. Not a bad thing to have. Check out her blog: http://scrap-stuff-photoshop-tutorials.blogspot.com/

Working on 2 new pieces

Okay, okay, so I haven't quite updated the website as much as I need to, but since I had written last, I did add a lot of newer work, especially Graphic Design, to my page. Carlos and I need to have a little sit down/pow wow/meeting over coffee and decide what to do next and what all to add and to delete. There is soooo much new stuff that it will be a complete overhaul this time around.

In other news, I have a full time job for now, and a couple of freelance gigs and have also recently started tutoring for the No Child Left Behind program, which is very time consuming and draining, but also very fulfilling for me. I've started to write my children's book (that I've put off for 2 years now) and am really starting to flood with ideas. At work, I take little creative breaks in between, because the design work I am hired to do is, well, less than creative. So here are some works in progress. These kinds of pieces are ones that I am forcing myself to do-as exercises, so that my brain doesn't stress over getting them done, but instead switches to making sure I learn from them.

First is a portrait of actor Simon Pegg as Sgt. Nicholas Angel from the movie "Hot Fuzz." If you have not seen this movie, I HIGHLY recommend it!


Second is one that needs even more work of Pinup Rockabilly model Jasper James. She is a doll!